A Bus Called Enterprise
by periferal
Summary: In which Spock is still an alien, everyone else are just people on Earth, and Starfleet is a distance possible future. There is a road trip. Some elements from the AOS, but mostly from TOS.
1. Fuckall, Georgia (Part I)

_Author's Note:_

 _This was based on a tumblr post, which can be found either on my tumblr, .com, or on my ao3, which is periferal same as my ffn. It's my first attempt at a road trip fic, really, and it's all meant in good fun.  
See general disclaimers here. As stated, some elements from AoS, but is really mostly ToS specific. _

_Hope you enjoy, please leave a review if you do!_

(-)

They've run out of gas money. It's hilarious (it's not hilarious, only Jim calls it hilarious upon a retelling) because they've run out of gas money in Fuckall, Georgia (that's what Bones calls it, though Jim's been thinking it) and Atlanta's only a few more hours of driving away.  
So, Jim being Jim he heads to the closest restaurant looking place he can find and barges into the kitchen, demanding more than asking whether they're looking for anyone willing to wash dishes.  
Bones, who's not exactly drinking but not exactly sober, looks up at the human chaos entity and hears about half a sob story and, in a moment of impulsive generosity that likely involves his not being terribly employed at the moment, offers to help.  
Jim isn't stupid. He looks at Bones with a kind of suspicion that the doctor understands on a personal level, but the kid nods and says, "Look, I have some friends with me."  
Bones will be the first to admit he assumes the kid means a girlfriend, probably, a boyfriend maybe. Why else would he be passing through a shithole town like this?

What Bones doesn't expect is a pointy-eared honest to god hobgoblin alien, who blushes bright green of all colors when Bones cracks a comment about strange hookups.

Jim waves the joke away and asks the alien, "Does he look honest?"  
The alien looks at Bones like he can read his soul, and it's goddamn uncanny. "Yes," the alien- who is apparently named Spock, like that goddamned fifties pediatrician- says, and Jim nods.  
"Alright," the kid says. "You know if you drag us to your basement to eat us Nyota's gonna kill you."  
Nyota, he finds out, is a childhood friend of Jim's and she is absolutely terrifying, in a way that almost reminds him of his ex-wife, minus the old hurt.  
Of course he lets the three idiots stay at his place, old dump of a half-abandoned farmhouse though it is.

Long fully sobered up, he debates with himself whether he should give them beers. He has no idea how drinking ages work with green-blooded aliens, but he assumes the two humans are at least old enough to drive, probably a bit older.

He doesn't think to actually ask.

Eventually he offers anyway because what the hell, it's not as though the two policemen responsible for this town are going to leave the fire station long enough to bother with underage drinking. It'd be pointless, and more than a little hypocritical.

Nyota and Spock both refuse, but Jim grabs one and clicks it against the one Bones has taken out for himself.

"You a doctor?" Jim asks, looking at his beer more than drinking it, and Bones realizes that he's looking up at the certificate of commendation he keeps forgetting to take down.

"Yup," Bones says. He doesn't say that he hasn't worked at a hospital in a year now.

"Huh," Jim says. He's now lying on his stomach on Bones's good couch. He pokes at Spock, whose sitting a little stiffly at the far end of the same couch. "Hey," he says, "I'm assuming you have doctors on your planet?"

Bones has to wonder whether Spock finds it strange that these three humans he's revealed himself to don't seem terribly bothered. Bones himself is more vindicated than anything- he's not the sort to believe in magical white people aliens living in the center of the Earth, but the idea of their speck of a planet being the only one out there has always been foreign to him.

"Of course," Spock says. His tone could almost be condescending, but Jim smiles at him in a way that looks a lot more real than the kid's smile had been back at the restaurant. "It is far more advanced than Earth technology."

"I mean you do have spaceships," Jim says. "I wonder if Mom's found that yet?" he asks the air more than Spock.

"The cloaking device I installed on my ship is beyond detection by what is available to your mother," Spock says, and Jim laughs and pokes him again.

"I know, I know," he says. "You wonder why we're here, Doc?" Jim asks. He starts calling Bones Bones a little later.

"'Course," Bones says. "It's not every day I get aliens camping in my guest room."

"I'm looking for my father," Spock says.

"Huh," Bones says. He shushes the scientist part of his brain that wants to ask whether father means the same thing to Spock that is does to literally all of humanity.

"Why Georgia?"

"We're looking in cities," Jim says, implying Atlanta.

Silence doesn't so much fall as ooze over the four of them, and Bones realizes that Jim is less drinking and more watching Bones drink.

Making an executive decision for once in the past ridiculous year of his life, he screws the cap back on his bottle and walks over to put it back in the fridge.

"What's wrong with you, Doc?" Jim asks, in a flight of perceptiveness that Bones gets used to, eventually.

"I'll tell you eventually," Bones says, not quite realizing he's promising a longer interaction with these three than he ever intended.

He can't figure out at first why Nyota's with them. Jim's obviously attached himself to Spock like some kind of friendly parasitic vine, and Bones catches glimpses of fondness in Spock's otherwise inscrutable eyes. But Nyota is the kind of smart that makes Bones think of college degrees, not that goddamned VW Bus Jim calls the Enterprise and a roadtrip adventure for an alien's dad, or with sitting on the half-decent rug which represents half of what Bones got from his marriage.

"You have any idea how shitty the linguistics classes are at the local community college?" is all she says in answer. "And Jim needs someone who can speak Vulcan, if Spock's translator ever breaks down."  
That answers another question Bones hasn't really thought about.

"How the hell do you speak Vulcan?" Bones asks.

Nyota shrugs. "I have my ways," she says. "That, and Spock's jurry-rigged his ship's computer into the Enterprise and it can teach me."

"Your car can talk," Bones says to Jim.

Jim smiles blindingly in Bones's direction. He's not fooled.

Bones isn't terribly religious but still he looks vaguely skyward and mutters "Jesus mother of Mary."  
"You have the order reversed there, Bones," Jim says.

"Go to bed," Bones says, both because he's run out of things to say and because it really is late now.

"Show us to the basement, Doc," Jim says.

Nyota's eyeroll only increases Bones's admiration.


	2. Fuckall, Georgia (Part II)

_author's note: i'm still just crossposting stuff off of ao3. this continues the last chapter. also, i know wrong fandom, but rip carrie fisher, you will be missed._

Bones wakes up crying three hours after he goes to bed. They aren't loud tears- to his knowledge he doesn't sob in his sleep. It's just tears. It's probably about four in the morning and he pushes his way out of a bedroom that has far too many memories in it, down the rickety steps to the living room.

He finds Spock sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of the couch. His eyes are closed and his breathing is shallow. Bones gives himself a moment to wonder whether he has any breathing apparatus hidden on him.

Bones has to fight down the ridiculous urge to walk past him on tiptoe.

"Doctor," Spock says without opening his eyes, startling Bones enough to make him jump a little, "Unless I am mistaken, do not humans require at least eight hours of rest per day?"

Is that way of speaking a Spock thing or a translator thing, Bones wonders. "Is there a reason you're quoting basic information at me, hobgoblin?" Bones asks. The nickname is mostly accidental. He has yet to drink coffee so his body is still screaming at him for being awake.

"You went to your bedroom three hours ago," Spock says. "That is not enough sleep."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Bones says, but he can't bring himself to walk past Spock. He goes around the back of the couch to the kitchen.

"You're not exactly asleep either," Bones says, as he starts up his ancient coffee maker.

"I need far fewer hours to sleep," Spock says, "I have been meditating."

"Jim snores, doesn't he?" Bones says, dismissing the idea that Spock magically needs less sleep out of hand. Unless he's actually a tentacle beast in a very clever suit, he may be an alien but he's still presumably similar enough to humans... Bones stops that train of thought before it goes places he is too sleep deprived to deal with.

"Ah, yes, Doctor." Bones come out of the kitchen and sits on his couch, avoiding the fucked up spring. "Snoring is not as much an issue for us," he says.

"Bullshit," Bones says.

He takes a sip of coffee and revels in the feeling of not being quite so foggy headed.

"I assure you Doctor-" Spock begins, but Bones interrupts him.

"You're not a giant insectoid wearing some kind of super technological cloaking device, right?" he asks.

Spock raises an eyebrow at him. Bones has the sudden sinking feeling that this is going to be a theme. Mostly, it's impressive because he does it without opening his eyes.

"I'm going to take that as a no," Bones continues, "so presumably your breathing apparatus is similar to humans. Which means that it can get clogged, and otherwise malfunction."

"In any case," Spock says, with a dismissal that means Bones is probably right, "I do not snore, and it was becoming disruptive."

Bones has yet another sinking feeling. This one is related to the idea that the snorer is probably Nyota, and that Jim's being thrown under the metaphorical bus for reasons of blatant murder threats.

"You want coffee?" Bones asks. It's a good default question. Not only does it change the topic automatically to mundanities, it gives Bones a task no matter the answer.

"Caffeine has little effect on me," Spock says.

"Huh," Bones says. "Does meditation mean the same for you that is does for me?" he asks. He's trying to avoid asking Spock to speak for his entire species but it's definitely hard to not wonder sometimes (or a lot. He's known Spock barely half a day and already he has way too many questions, some of which are definitely more appropriate for a '60s pulp movie).

"I doubt it," Spock says. "Few humans, if any, has shown any signs of high ESP ability."

"Okay so that's where you lose me," Bones says. "I can deal with you being from another planet- I'm just glad you're not actually a lizard-" he ignores the eyebrow this time, "but telepathy? Really?"

"Your belief is irrelevant to the truth of my statements, Doctor," Spock says.

Bones sighs. "So you meditate to what, recharge your space voodoo?" he asks. It's not a terribly scientific question.

"I go into a state of which allows my nonphysical senses to rest," Spock says.

"Alright," Bones says, "I'll believe you for now. I'm assuming you can drink water?" he asks, because who the hell even knows. He assumes Spock can drink water. He's not dead.

"Yes," Spock says. "Even if I were, as you said, a lizard, I would still drink water."

"Look you're from space you're going to have to give me a couple months before I stop asking questions," Bones says. He goes back to the kitchen, fills a glass with water and returns to the living room. "This water is potentially questionable but I don't have any bottled water right now," Bones says, putting the glass on the floor next to Spock.

Spock actually opens his eyes and looks at the glass. "I do not need this at the moment," Spock says.

"I haven't seen you consume anything since you've shown up, and that's a few hours," Bones says. "Jim and Nyota at least have the excuse of still being asleep."

Spock almost grudgingly drinks the water. "There is no logical reason for you to be concerned with my well being," he says. Bones takes this as a thank you.

"I'm a doctor," he says. It should explain everything.

"Yes?"

"I'm not letting you die on me."

"Doctor, I am in no danger of expiration." Spock is almost amused. Not that Bones can tell, since the guy could be a professional poker player if he wanted to.

Spock puts the glass back down and closes his eyes. "Thank you," he says, after a few moments of silence.

Bones brings the glass to the sink. He sits down at the rough kitchen table and stares at it. What is he even doing. There is an alien in his house. More importantly, there are three random young people of various ages in his house, two of which are currently sleeping in his basement, and, apparently, snoring.

It's not that he's all that old, really. He turned thirty two months ago, and in all probability Jim and Nyota are both in their early twenties at the youngest. Spock is probably something similar, unless Vulcans are elves or something, which considering the pointed ears isn't actually that unlikely.

Bones just feels ancient.

What he hasn't told them is that this is the most complicated interaction he's had with people who aren't his daughter in over a year.

"What are you doing here?" he asks without leaving the kitchen. Before Spock can go full pedantic ass on him he adds, "I mean, on this planet. I can't imagine Vulcan's all that close to Earth."

"I am looking for my father," Spock says. His voice is barely above a whisper. Maybe that's just the distance between them. "My last communication from him was localized to this part of the continent, which appears to be primarily the United States of America. It was surprising to discover your planet is not unified."

"Earth's not unifying any time soon," Bones says. "Can't imagine how your people pulled it off."

"We are a much less emotional people than you appear to be," Spock says.

Bones doesn't call bullshit on that, even though he should. After all, Spock is currently traveling in a VW Bus across America with Jim the human tornado and Nyota, who is probably a superspy or something. That, of all things, reeks of emotion.

Bones falls asleep at the table, despite the coffee. He wakes up on his couch under a blanket.

"Unemotional my ass," he mutters at no one, a little perplexed at the warmth in his chest.


	3. Fuckall, Gerogia (Part III)

_AN: After five million years, the next installment, which is already up on AO3! (Seriously, my AO3 is where most of my stuff is. Crossposting is a weird process that involves trying to figure out how to write summaries in the limited space of the FNN textbox)_

* * *

The stillness of the morning is broken by Jim almost literally bouncing up the basement steps into the living room. "Hi!" he says, "I'm going to make food!"

"What," is all Bones can say, before he pushes the blanket off his knees and gets up. He stretches, popping joins stiff both with sleeping on the couch and a distant prelude to age. "What," he repeats, as he follows Jim into the kitchen, his shirt hiking up. He pulls it down.

"I'm making food!" Jim exclaims. He opens one of the falling off cabinet doors in Bones's kitchen. Only then does he gain a kind of awareness, and he turns to his accidental host and asks, "I can do that, right?"

Bones, for all his depressive episodes, has yet to fall out of the habit of eating which he lost in medical school and picked up when his daughter was born. He has, if his memory isn't faulty, enough to probably feed at least the three strangers.

"Yeah," Bones says in a half grunt.

Jim nods with a manic delight that wakes Bones up more than it should. His guest opens the fridge and starts, for lack of a better term, puttering around the kitchen preparing a breakfast involving more cheese and eggs than Bones remembers having in his kitchen.

"How do you know how to cook?" Bones asks. Jim seems more the kind to live off ramen and frozen pizza, a sentiment which must express itself somehow in his question.

"Oh you know," Jim says, "had to feed myself and turns out I'm good at it." He throws Bones a smile that is more disarming than it should be. In that moment, Bones is struck by how ridiculously pretty Jim is, heterogeneous eyes practically glittering. That his hair is messed up from sleep doesn't help matters.

Shoving those thoughts aside, Bones coughs. What Jim's saying screams of some kind of neglect, but Bones isn't sure if he's close enough to him to pry anywhere near that past.

"Is Nyota awake?" Bones asks. He thinks he'd be more comfortable calling her by a last name- she has that kind of impression on him, at least- but so far all he has is first names. Spock, he thinks, might not even have any others.

"Yup," Jim says, "she should be appearing about-"

His prediction is both interrupted and fulfilled by the woman herself entering the kitchen. She, like the others (well, Jim at least, Bones only assumes this about Spock, who has yet to reappear), has slept in her clothes, and her hair is the same kind of tangled bedhead as Jim's. She is also takes Bones attention and keeps it, but differently than Jim.

He is probably a little, to put it nicely, completely fucked.

"Coffee," she orders, and Bones without thinking hastens to make a pot.

After downing the caffeine there is an effect of a machine switching into gear and she looks at Jim. "Did you ask before making a mess in the kitchen?" she asks.

"Yup," Jim says. "And you're going to like this, it's that omelet thing I made a lot your freshman year." Of college or highschool he doesn't specify.

"That's good," Nyota says, but she barely spares a thought for it before turning to Bones, all business and intimidating despite the sleep she's still blinking out of her eyes. "Thank you for your hospitality," she says, "but mostly we'd like to know where we can earn the cash to get back on the road." She looks over at Jim again, "Without him making an ass of himself again, I mean," she says.

"I have money," he says, and he does, more than he spends on himself. The hospital around here hadn't paid well but he has what he's saved from when he worked in Atlanta. That money's original intention was Joanna's college education but that's another aspect of his daughter's life his ex-wife won't let him near.

His original intent is to just give them cash enough (suspicious looks from Nyota notwithstanding) to get to Atlanta at least, where apparently, it being a city, Nyota will have better access to her parents, who are possibly one of the main sources of funding for this epic quest.

They, presumably, think it's just her trying to find herself with a couple of odd white boys. Her parents, Nyota admits, are convinced Spock and Jim are an item, and are therefore less concerned than they could have been.

Bones's curiosity about hers and Jim's hometown only grows with this declaration.

"Look," Bones ends up saying as he packs up his stuff in the back of the ridiculous VW bus, "somebody's got to be the responsible one." This is where his plan ends up, instead of just giving them the cash and casting them out of his life and on their way elsewhere.

Between this and the kitchen he encounters Spock again, who looks as put together as he did the night before. He appears to have actually slept, and really, Bones needs to stop finding these strangers so distracting.

But that's not really why he goes with them on a phony claim of responsibility. Despite his relative age Nyota has all the sheer badassery the adventuring party needs, and appears to have kept the two boys in line well enough so far. But that's what he declares, because it works better than some breaking down and crying confession.

Jim is delighted with his proposition. He's already dragging Bones into his orbit, though Bones is sure he'll never feel the same kind of bizarre devotion Spock has for him, and Nyota seems to find the half broken doctor if not terribly interesting than at least amusing. Spock is an enigma, but that comes with the territory of being an alien, or so Bones assumes.

His house will be there for him when he returns, presuming no one sets it on fire in a fit of rebellion against the nothing this town continues to be.  
He doesn't say, even as he drags a dufflebag full of clothes, medical supplies, an elderly laptop, and usable food out front and into the back of the bus, that he's mostly coming on this strange excursion because he's not sure he can make it through a second year like this.

He makes a point of leaving his booze behind, unplugging the minifridge he keeps the bottles in. He's not sure if it's a point anyone else notices.

Spock, giving more credence to his claims of telepathy than Bones is entirely comfortable with, watches him with an awareness that belies his supposed emotionlessness.

Not that Bones doesn't heckle him about it.

He sleeps that first day in the _Enterprise_ , stretched out where they've set up sleeping bags in the back. He doesn't want to watch the town he's come to feel ambivalent towards shrink in the distance, just as he doesn't want to watch Atlanta loom up in front of them either.

It'll be good for them to have someone with half an idea of how medicine works, he thinks. He's mostly sure he's not just making an excuse to justify his being there.

If this turns out to be a dream, it's the least cruel dream he's had in a good long while.


	4. Riverside, Iowa, to Fuckall, Georgia

It's two in the morning when Nyota wakes up to the sound of James Tiberius Fucking Kirk pounding on the window to her bedroom like the hero of one of the cheesy romcoms he makes her watch sometimes.

She pulls a shirt and pair of pants on in the dark. She walks over to him and pull up the window but not the screen, and says, "What the fuck are you doing?"  
He's scrambled up the tree which leans dangerously over the roof, he says. "Look," he continues, and there's an odd mix of fear and wonder in his face that she doesn't think she's seen in him in a long, long time, "I need to show you something."  
"There's a front door, you know," Nyota says. "Mom and dad are both working tonight."

She understands intellectually that as brilliant doctors its a blessing to the tiny local hospital that her parents are on call twenty-four/seven, but there's a part of her that wishes that they were here to stop her getting on the back of Jim's motorcycle and speeding down the down dirt path to his house.

Like every house out here, it's in the middle of someone else's cornfield.

The lights are off in his house- obviously his mother is either asleep or continuing her pattern of benevolent neglect. He doesn't go that far up the driveway.

He instead stops the motorcycle by the barn which Nyota is sure had some purpose beyond half built radios and supposedly the occasional lay (who, she wonders, would Jim want to fuck in this town?) a long time ago, but now mostly looks like a delapidated treehouse sans tree.

"I swear I haven't been smoking anything," Jim reassures her as he creaks open the door to the barn, which only makes her more nervous. He's telling the truth, of course, but it means whatever's about to happen is going to be weird.

Sitting besides a vehicle is a guy whose notable mostly because his ears are pointy.

"This is Spock," Jim says. He's biting at his lip. "Spock's an alien."

Nyota, and she's not proud to admit this later, bursts out laughing. "Of course," she says, doubling over. She staggers into a bench. "Of course you get an alien crash-landed in your backyard."

"I assure you, Nyota Uhura, I did not crash my vehicle."

There's a delay between his mouth and his words that's just suble enough to catch Nyota's attention.

"I thought you'd be more skeptical," Jim confesses.

"Oh, honey," Nyota says. She places a hand on his arm, "it's you."

He is, after all, the son of two former astronauts.

"So you're Spock?" she asks the alien. He stands and gives her a slight bow.

"Yes," he says, "I- I mistook a prank of Jim's as a communication from my father." The admission seems to pain him.

"Wait," she says, turning back to Jim, "those crop circles actually turned out to be some kind of script?"  
Jim shrugs. "Yeah," he says, with a kind of dumbfounded enthusiasm.

"Why did you tell me?" Nyota asks.

"You can help me, can't you?" he asks. "You're the only other person I trust to drive the _Enterprise_ , anyway."

Oh, fuck. The _Enterprise_ is a VW Bus that Jim's been painstakingly rebuilding for ten years, now, or something, named after a shuttle Nyota's pretty sure blew up at some point.

"You're going on a roadtrip, aren't you," Nyota says.

"Yup!" Jim says. "Just as soon as Spock here's rested up, and done some final repairs," he makes a thumbs up motion at Spock, who merely goes back to what Nyota only now realizes isn't an iPad, but something which looks like an iPad but is probably spacetech (Space! Space! a part of her brain that is shaped like a ball with an eye happily informs her).

"Oh great," Nyota says.

She's going to have to go with them. Not only that, but this is the out she's been looking for. Possibly. The out she's actually been looking for is either eventually the navy or some miraculous discovery by a university her parents actually approve of, but barring that, a roadtrip across the country with an alien sounds... not as bad as it could be, all things considered.

"You're being really chill about this," Jim says. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Nyota starts laughing again. "I'd be skeptical if you were saying he was from the moon," Nyota says, "but you know. I've always kind of assumed there were aliens."

"Nyota Uhura," Spock says, looking up from his device, "I apologize if we have interrupted your sleep. I assured Jim that I am able to wait."  
"It's alright," Nyota says automatically. "Wait, Jim's letting you work on the _Enterprise_?"

Spock nods.

"Christ, then I really do have to trust you, don't I?" she says. She refuses to clarify to his quizzical look.

She asks her parents, and they immediately get the wrong idea. Well, it's not as though she's telling them the truth- Vulcan is not, to her knowledge, a planet known to anyone other than a few NASA scientists, and probably to them as a numbered dot on a faraway sun- but it's still amusing how they immediately jump to 'Jim's found himself a boyfriend."  
"There are stranger ways of finding oneself," her mother reasons to her father.

They are both very well dressed, well put together people. Their teeth are shiny enough for commercials.

"We'll send you money every few weeks," her father assures her.

It would be nice, she thinks, if they put up some kind of argument. Then, at least, it would be different.

Their first day on the Enterprise, which is loaded up with provisions (read: canned everything) and has a wifi connection thanks to Spock's impressive monkeying ("I do not understand the expression," he tells her, "in any case, I am surprised there is not universal data access." She replies that he will probably be surprised by a lot on Earth if he keeps this up.), is not eventful in the traditional sense.

Jim, who is sitting with Spock in the first row of the benchlike seats, discovers by accident that apparently Vulcan hands are super super sensitive.

It would be funny if not for Spock's obvious discomfort, which Jim reacts to with a combinatin of fascinated interest and genuine distress.

"Fascinating," is said by Spock about ten times an hour, at such things as aboveground electrical wires and computers that don't always automatically reply to speach.

Vulcans, she discovers, can get tired, and the two of them fall asleep on top of each other.

Jim takes the morning shift and Nyota can't help herself but ask Spock to turn off his translation devise.

Vulcan, she disovers, sounds absolutely horrifying, in the same way that makes her want to learn Ancient Sumerian.

When he turns the device back on Nyota tells him and that she is learning Vulcan, or at least his language of Vulcan.

It's not a question to her that there are thousands of others. There have to be.

The task of picturing an entire other planet is a little daunting, but you know. It has to be like Earth somehow, especially since Spock isn't sentient goop or the like.

"You know Vulcan is a god of smiths and volcanoes," she tells him. "It's interesting that your translator picked that word for you."

Spock admits that it was his father that gave their home planet that designation, at least in English, which he says he assumes is not the only language on the Earth, only the most spoken. "Ours is a desert planet," he tells her, "mostly due to our own folly."

"Oh," is all she has to say to that.

Their second night in the _Enterprise_ Nyota is behind the wheel, blinking sleep out of her eyes as dawn rises. Their current (very vague) plan is to make their way first to Cincinnati via Springfield, Illinois (it's a very vague plan, depending mostly on their single functioning GPS), avoiding most states below the Mason-Dixie line and looking around the major cities up the East Coast.

Part of Nyota's personal plan is to extend this ridiculous road trip as long as possible, if only so she has a concrete excuse not to go back home for a while.

Home is fine, but home is still Riverside, Iowa, where she is part of multiple demographics which barely rate above a percentage point in the census. Home is still a town where nothing happens, where an alien showing up in Jim Kirk's backyard is something that brings relief instead of terror.

Home is. Home is complicated.

She's keeping herself awake listening to Spock and Jim talk to each other in sleepy mumbles.

Well Jim is talking to Spock in sleepy mumbles while Spock replies with an already fond exasperation.

Nyota can see how her parents can assume the two of them are dating, or fucking at least. For a spaceman and a chaos entity they've gotten closer than Nyota assumed possible for Jim.

She only knows everything about him because they've known each other since she shoved worms down the back of his shirt in second grade for touching her hair without permission.

This is nice, she thinks again. The road has yet to change.

There's not much to find in Cincinatti.

At this point, both Nyota and Jim have heard the spiel about how Vulcans are a very logical people, and how it would be illogical anyway for Surek (Vulcans, apparently, have a thing for S-names, considering there have also been mentioned Stonn, Sarek, Silak, and a few others) to go there, as it is not exactly a _great_ population center.

So they go south. Nyota's head fills with visions of Confederate flags (which she sees anyway) and trucks, and she's both disappointed and not.

The only city they're even going to for now is Atlanta, and that's partly because Jim kind of wants to see Atlanta and it's enough of a city to count for Spock's purposes.

He has yet to explain why he's so fixated on cities. Nyota assumes because they're the most obvious population centers, and the best place to hide if you're a literal man from outerspace.

Nyota is more impressed than she lets on by the Doctor they pick up. He reminds her more of the veteran regulars at the restaurant she worked at through high school than any kind of medical professional, but that's more for her to think and not talk about.

Jim takes a liking to him instantly, and so when he offers to come along of course he comes along.

She can kill him, anyway, if he tries anything funny.

He's quiet, the first few days on the _Enterprise_ , and then he and Spock start bickering and frankly it's just on this side of adorable.

* * *

 _Hey, sorry for the long delay in updating again. This is also not being updated on AO3, so basically I'm just catching up the crossposting. Right now I'm focusing on some of my RWBY stuff, most of which hasn't been put up here because what is energy, and I probably won't be doing that much writing until after finals end in about a month. But for those of you who have commented, thank you so much! It really brightens my day to see that, along with favorites and follows, of course.  
Please review!_


	5. A Few Hours Outside of Memphis

_Meeting Scotty._

* * *

Montgomery Scott, Nyota decides, is really a decent kind of man.

They're in Memphis, because doubling back seemed like a good idea and anyway, it's not like they have a real destination, and there's this book Jim read once that he's now talked Spock's ear off about and anyway, Bones has a cousin- it's all very complicated and boils down to them needing to find a mechanic. The _Enterprise_ is, after all, older than all of them, and even Spock is at a loss as to why exactly the smoke it's exuding is that acrid.

Jim doesn't put much stock in mechanics. The one in Riverside is a drunk who works at the gas station and who causes more problems than he fixes.

Scott doubletakes at Spock's ears and then doesn't ask again, contenting himself with excited babbling about this stupid fucking bus which Nyota swears is growing more sentient by the day.

It swears at her in Vulcan sometimes, which Spock declares should be an impossibility. Vulcans do not swear.

Leonard, at that, comments that Vulcans apparently don't piss, either, which leads to another snarkfest that gives Nyota the sudden urge to lock them in a room.

But, yeah, Montgomery Scott is a decent kind of man. He calls Nyota "lass" once, which is weird, and his cat is a little annoying, but he also actually fixes the _Enterprise_ , to Jim's blatant joy, and admits he's going to be let go soon.

"Why?" Jim asks.

"Oh, you know," Scott says, "there's not much use for being able to fix cars as old as that one, not outside of specialty shops."  
Nyota and McCoy both unsubtly prod Spock before he can make a comment about efficient allotment of resources.

"You could come with us?" Jim asks. "I mean," he says, and he's already calculating replies to any protest the rest of them could come up with, Nyota can see it, "we obviously need someone else to work on her," Nyota rolls her eyes at the pronoun for the car, "and you know." He shrugs beguilingly.

Jim, for all his faults, is very good at getting his way, and to the bafflement of all of them, including Scott probably, they now have yet another sleeping bag, more useless technical crap, and a cat named Keenser in the bus, along with all the stuff that was already there.

"This is going to go great," Jim says, and it probably will for him. He's the shonen anime protagonist. The whoop and hitting of the steering wheel are both unnecessary.

Nyota claims the passenger seat. She has no desire to be crammed between McCoy and Spock for however long the next jaunt is- let Scott experience that firsthand.

"So, Scotty," Jim begins, thus birthing the nickname, "what broken and otherwise miserable home do you come from?"

"Actually," Scott replies, rolling with the random gear shift, "my home life was very good!" Nyota is almost entirely turned around in her seat so she can watch his face. "However, my parents are now both dead."

Jim cackles.

"What?" Scott asks, not upset, merely surprised. The cackling sets Keenser off rampaging around the backseat.

"So the pattern continues regardless," Jim says. "We're not stealing you from anything significant, right?"  
"You could have asked that three hours ago," McCoy says. "You know, before we'd left the city limits of Memphis in the dust."

"There is very little dust in the actual environs-" Spock begins.  
"Quiet, you," McCoy says, "you know damn well it's a metaphor."

Scotty, who Nyota now suspects has siblings, ignore the two ostensibly grown men completely and says, "No, not really. Was in the army, but that was before DADT was repealed. Been sort of bumming around various places since then." He looks around with genuine glee at the insides of the car, "Haven't seen one of these in awhile, you know."  
"If you start making eyes at the car- just don't," McCoy says. He pulls a face.

A few more hours later Jim stops at a rest stop. It's time for him and Nyota to swap, anyway. "Okay," he says, "time for all of you to do your business, or harass the new guy, or whatever, I'm going to see if this one has a vending machine."

The chances of this are, actually, about fifty/fifty. Most of the rest stops that aren't plastered with McDonald's and Speedy's and WhateverElse's tend to either be an unattended near literal hole in the ground, or a decently maintained but abandoned place with a half full vending machine and single stall bathrooms.

This one, thankfully, appears to be in the second one.

Scotty is yawning. Keenser has been left in the bus, because none of them want to lose him in the wood. Mostly.

"Hi," Nyota says, because she hasn't actually talked to him all that much yet. "It seems you've been swept along by the Jim-shaped train. Or tornado. Whatever." She definitely needs to drive through the nearest coffee-dispensing location. It would be bad for her to fall asleep at the wheel.

"Yeah!" Scotty says. "You seriously do not understand how good it is to be doing something. Even if that something is- what exactly are you folks seeking?"  
"Spock's an alien," Nyota says. She probably should write a script for this, if Jim's going to continue picking up people like Boxcar Children, "his dad's missing, we're going on a very inefficient hunt for him."

Scotty's face does something funny and for a moment Nyota wonders if she's about to witness the first normal reaction to the news. It would almost be comforting, if complicated.

"You know, that would explain the ears," Scotty says instead. "Better than my theory of goth rocker, anyhow."

"Goth rocker?"  
"You know," Scotty says. "People who get their ears changed to look like elves and whatnot. I'm assuming that's what he's pretending to be?"

"Ah," Nyota says, "he and Jim don't leave the van much outside of cities." At least not around here. Frankly Nyota doesn't either.

It's complicated.

"Oh," Scotty says.

"Not quite," Nyota says. "I think."

There's a chance that's something's developed there but Nyota's pretty sure she would have heard it by this point. In any case, her money is still on McCoy and Spock. They argue just enough that it could turn into something else.

"I'm going to go get a bite," Scotty says. "Well, a snack. I dunno if vending machine food counts as a proper bite."

Nyota momentarily regrets her knowledge of French slang. Sighing, she goes back to the van to rest a bit more before they head out.

* * *

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	6. Maybe, North Carolina

_Where the fuck is Pavel from anyway?_

They find this tiny Russian boy curled up in the backseat of Jim's car. The doors are locked.

Presumably he's broken in at some point but whenever anyone asks them he shrugs and makes some comment about lockpicks invented in Russia being superior to American locks.

There are times when it feels like this kid has grown up in 1970s East Germany, what with all his ranting about capitalism, but considering Uhura says similar things when it's three am and she's been driving for ten hours, no one really minds.

They're not anywhere specific. They're somewhere north of North Carolina but beyond that their GPS has fucked up again so who knows.

He's just there, and Russian, and prays each morning _in_ Russian to the point that Jim starts calling him the Red Terror, just to get a rise out of him. It doesn't, really, because he smiles at everything. Bones mentally thinks of him as "the boy" because he looks about fifteen and is only a few years older.

But in response Pavel starts calling Jim "Keptin" in that accent of his, and to Bones's horror he picks it up. Scotty does too, and Nyota when she's feeling particularly argumentative, and Spock calls Jim "Captain" when he's trying to get his attention.

Or, sometimes, maybe, when he wants to get a rise out of Bones but that's something Bones won't admit unless he's very drunk, which he hasn't been since the beginning of this trip.

Pavel, or the boy, or Chekov, or Red Terror, or whoever, smiles in a way that should remind Bones of the Stepford Wives but instead seems genuinely happy.

"What are you?" he asks Spock, looking at his ears with an open curiosity that Scotty hid and Bones never has the guts to show.

"I am a Vulcan," Spock answers, because the boy has already broken into Jim's van, so he's probably going to travel with them. It's not a spoken decision, they just have this scary group telepathy thing going on that is probably a side effect of living in a van with an alien for multiple months. "I am not from the Earth."

"How did you get here?" Pavel asks, "the space between the stars is very big." Eventually, Bones thinks to himself, they will find someone who reacts to this news with screaming, or disbelief, or otherwise normally. "Eventually" has not yet come to pass.

"We've long developed warp technology," Spock says. There are, Bones thinks, probably rules against telling 'less developed' alien species about Vulcan space ships but there are also probably rules against traveling in a van with them, so who even knows anything even more. "Earth is not as far away from Vulcan as some other worlds."

Bones wonders if this is a Vulcan equivalent to reckless, saying all this. "There are other worlds?" Pavel asks, with the enthusiasm of either a small dog or a very good assassin.

"Yes," Spock says. He looks almost abashed, "My apologies- I have already spoken more than is probably wise."

Pavel shrugs it off. He curls back up into the ball they found him in, but that doesn't stop him speaking. "I wonder," he says, "where are you going?"

"We're not sure," Bones says. "Unless you have a better idea than me?" he asks Nyota, because she seems to have a better grasp of what's going on than any of them, at all times. Better than Jim, definitely, and this is supposedly his adventure.

"Somewhere," Nyota says. Is she truly unsure of where they're going next? Is she fucking with him? Both are equally possible, and possibly equally true.

"That isn't here?" Pavel asks. He is quiet, and deadly serious. Here, Bones thinks, isn't much of anywhere really. It could be a city, maybe, if it tried a little harder.

"Yes," Nyota says, "that definitely isn't here."

There's a discomfort, for all of them, outside of the really big cities, and they've been outside of really big cities for a while.

Bones is an "old country doctor" but he's only exactly comfortable like that because of an assortment of circumstances that makes him really, really lucky.

Finding Pavel marks an unofficial time to go. And anyway, Bones doesn't want to be somewhere where he has the sneaking suspicion that some of the people in the public bathrooms are watching him just a little too closely when he goes into the stalls.

"Do you have somewhere you're leaving, lad?" Scotty asks, hours into the ride. These questions, which should go at the beginning, always don't.

Everyone in the back can hear everyone, so Bones, who looks asleep but isn't, listens.

"Everywhere and nowhere," Pavel says. "Sometimes I wish I could return to Russia. Most of the time, I don't." It's a confession, of a sorts, considering how much he talks up Russia. "They probably wouldn't like me very much over there."

The poor kid probably has some romanticized notion of communism and homeland. In his defense, so did Bones, for a while, in his early twenties. Well not the homeland, but definitely the communism. That had been an interesting conversation with a lot of different adults, really.

Georgia has a complicated history with just about everything.

"I sort of get that," Scotty says. "Where I'm from is not so bad, anymore, but it was, for a while. How's it feel to know that aliens are real?"

"It makes sense. It makes sense also that Spock is not a little green man," Pavel says. Bones has to bite back a joke that really, that's what Spock is.

Spock has headphones on and is intently watching... something on the laptop he has appropriated from Jim. He appears to prefer it to that tablet he brought with him along with the "ship's computer." Hopefully, it isn't one of those horrible animations on YouTube that always give Bones flashbacks to high school.

It's Spock. He could be watching conspiracy videos or _Charlie The Unicorn_ and consider both 'fascinating' insights into human culture. Bones has a sinking suspicion that it's _Charlie The Unicorn_.

"I am not little, or all that green," Spock says. "I am, however, close enough to what I am mostly certain "man" means for humans." He says it without looking up from the screen.

"That's what she said," Bones says with automatic tiredness. Oh, fuck, thinking about old videos has really made him twelve. Or made him channel his daughter temporary, who was twelve very recently. Either way, great.

Spock sighs. "I- I unfortunately understand that joke," he says.

"Good for you," Bones answers tiredly. He falls asleep for real, this time.

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	7. Near the US National Radio Quiet Zone

_Ben and Hikaru Sulu are very confused_.

"Hikaru," Ben says with false calm, "there's a van parked outside."

They live on the second-floor apartment of a nice enough house in a nice enough neighborhood of New York City. They will be able to afford for approximately two more months.

"Ah—yes there is," Hikaru says.

A twenty something white guy with truly impressive (apparently natural) bedhead stumbles out of the driver's seat.

Ben unsubtly opens the window.

"Bones!" the white guy declares to the air in general, "we're out of gas!"

Another white guy stumbles out of the back. He looks about thirty. Hikaru and Ben look at each other significantly.

"I noticed," is what the other white guy (Bones? Is that a name?) probably says. They are far enough down that it's hard for Ben to hear.

"They don't seem like criminals," Hikaru says optimistically.

Ben is a little more skeptical. The ancient van doesn't really give a good impression.

A third white guy stumbles out of the van. He is wearing headphones and holding a terrified looking cat.

"He really doesn't look like a criminal," Hikaru says.

"He looks mostly confused."

The fourth white guy—how are there four of them, do they travel in packs—is tiny, and triggers what Hikaru calls Ben's 'maternal instinct.'

"How old is that kid?" he asks.

"We have to go talk to them," Hikaru says. "At least buy them gas."

It's not as though it would hurt them too much, Ben thinks, to do that. Not any more than everything else is hurting them, in any case.

"Alright," he says.

He holds the door open for Hikaru, who laughs at him. Three stories down and through the front door and there are two more people standing by the van: a guy with pointed ears (what the hell), and a person who is neither white nor a guy.

"Hello," she says, "are we bothering you?" By 'we' she probably means 'these idiots.' Ben can imagine her pointing at them, even though she isn't.

"Not really," Ben says. "Do you guys need help?"

"We mostly need gas," she says. She says it in a way that makes Ben half-certain that she has been designated the normal-people ambassador.

"We don't really have gas on us?" Ben asks Hikaru, who shakes his head.

"We do have a car. We can get you gas." The traffic in this part of what could be considered a city is not-terrible enough that that won't take too long.

The woman who owns the gas station, because it's one of those gas stations that still has a mechanics shop instead of a convenience store attached to it, frequents the same bar Hikaru does so she probably won't ask too many questions such as "why are you getting a random can of gas" and "who are these people."

"Thank you," the woman says. "I'm Uhura."

"Hikaru, Ben," Hikaru says, pointing at himself and then at Ben in succession. "Do you want to come with us, or do you want one of us to go and one of us to stay?"

"It's probably for the best if Scotty or Jim goes with you—they're the ones that know what kind of gas the Enterprise can take."

It's the closest thing to a good plan they're going to get, Ben decides.

There's a kind of magnetism about Jim that he can already see Hikaru finds appealing.

Getting gas is painless. Getting back from the gas station is also mostly painless, because whatever charm Jim has it's not with the intent to attract, not really, it's something that might have been part defense mechanism once but now just makes him entertaining to share a car with.

"You know," he says, looking mostly at Hikaru, who is driving, "there's still room in the van, and I don't know if Scotty and Nyota and I can keep being the only ones taking shifts behind the wheel."

"What are you offering?"

Jim probably takes how slowly Hikaru speaks as hesitation, but Ben imagines he's thinking about how they don't have that much time left in the apartment.

Ben's research is banal, mostly having to do with the telescopes in the National Radio Quiet Zone. Even climate change deniers cannot take offense at the sky.

Hikaru, on the other hand, is just on this side of losing his grant money with the new administration, because his work and his identity and his politics are a horrible triumvirate of supposedly monstrous, supposedly disgusting, and too liberal.

Ben can take a few months off work, but he's going to let Hikaru make this choice. What he wants, most of all, is for him to be happy. He would also like a child, someday, but they don't have the money for that. Not yet.

"I don't have that much money on me," Jim says, "though Nyota's parents are pretty well off and give us enough money to buy food, gas if we actually reach the station before the van dies. Mostly what I'm offering can't be said until we get back to the van, because it's not my place to explain."

He's serious, all of a sudden, and Ben admits that curiosity is eating him, just a little.

"How long do you have left?" Ben asks Hikaru, realizing how that phrasing must sound as Jim's eyes widen. "On your grant."

Jim exhales. Ben's not sure if Hikaru notices.

"A few months, at the most. I think I'll be laid off soon, anyway. I'm not sure."

What neither Ben nor Hikaru have said is that Hikaru has always been fascinated by cars, by the act of driving of cars and what it means to do it well. An ancient van that looks half broken would certainly be an interesting problem to figure out.

"I can take my vacation time," Ben says.

Hikaru smiles, and the inside of Ben's chest lights up.

And so, the back of the van has two more duffle bags and Hikaru's books on botany and there are more laptop chargers and two more people Nyota has to a) explain the talking computer to b) explain the whole "Spock's an alien" thing too.

Hikaru screams just a little with excitement, and Ben has to put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from asking three hundred thousand questions in thirty seconds.

"Are we ever going to meet someone with a normal reaction?" Bones asks from the front seat. He is current shotgun, because Jim is driving and being heckled keeps him awake.

Hikaru will get a chance to drive once he has slept and once Jim has slept and most importantly, once Nyota has slept, so she can translate the Vulcan swear-words from the computer, something Spock refuses to do, it seems. He insists Vulcans do not swear, that those swears are from an archaic dialect that almost no one speaks.

Nyota replies, "And yet, the computer speaks it," and Ben finds himself just a little bit in love with her. She seems like she would make a kickass older sibling.

"I admit that the relaxed attitude of our passengers has made me less careful," Spock says. "I must exercise more caution; I can only assume there is prejudice on your planet. There is on mine, and we are more advanced technologically."

Oh, honey, Ben does not say. Spock looks more or less like a white guy, but the pointed ears and awkward way of interacting means he will run in to assholes at some point. Ben just hopes they never run into cops, if not for Spock's sake than for the sake of the absolutely tiny Russian boy, whose name, it turns out, is Pavel or Pasha. He seems to be absolutely without any legal documentation.

Not that Spock exists legally, either. Ben is pretty sure "Vulcan" is not a recognized nationality.

"I want to hear about these advances," Hikaru says. "If that breaks some code you have, I understand, but you are here, and Vulcan is far away, and this van has wifi even though it's really old, and the dashboard talks to us."

Ben too has a lot of questions, more questions than he can ever ask, but mostly what he wants is when this road trip is over, or at least when his vacation is over, is to petition for time on one of the telescopes so he can look at wherever Spock says Vulcan is, if he says where Vulcan is.

"I do not want to interfere with the progress of your technology on any grand scale," Spock says.

"You put your ship's computer in the Enterprise," Jim says.

"Grand scale," Spock reiterates, as though that makes anything better. "I am confident in the fact that if any of you approach the authorities you will be dismissed as kooks, or otherwise followers of the various conspiracy theories I have, unfortunately, found on your internet."

"Comforting." But he's right. It's also why Ben won't be able to get any time on a radio telescope for his personal projects—what hypothesis would he have, other than 'an alien told me?'

"Where are you guys going next?" Hikaru asks.

This is a question they should have asked before they packed their bags and paid a month's rent in advance.

"Providence, Rhode Island," Jim says. "I think. It's got a pretty well-known university in it, and maybe Spock's dad is there? Where was your last communication again?"

"The coordinates were scrambled, but I have been attempting to narrow them. Along the Eastern side of this land mass, I am almost certain."

"What word did you say for East?" Nyota asks, suddenly. "I'm assuming Vulcan has poles?"

"Yes," Spock says. "I said the word for the direction that would be 'rightwards,' assuming that on a representation of the planet, the pole with the greater landmass is 'up.'"

"I wonder if it's actually the same, between the two planets."

Ben is confused, for a moment. What are they talking about? Spock is speaking English in an American accent. Then he looks at Spock's lips as his mouth moves and realizes that it's like a Ghibli movie dub—good, but the disconnect is still there if you look close enough.

"Are you wearing a translator?"

The sheer processing power it must take to run something like that, a machine that can translate a language into one that is literally alien in real time, boggles

Hikaru's mind slightly.

"Yes."

"How many languages does it have?"

"It can learn any language if exposed to it for long enough," Spock says. "Though it is not very good at idiom."

That makes sense. "Any language?"

"It can understand Swahili and Basque, at least," Nyota says. "After about fifteen minutes of talking at Spock he understood both languages surprisingly well."

"You speak Swahili and Basque?"

"She can speak all the languages," Jim says.

"A slight exaggeration," Nyota says. "Though that is my personal impossible-tier goal."

"How well does it work with multiple people talking at once?" Ben asks.

"There is some amount of lag, but unless I am suddenly standing in a screaming crowd, it is programmed to prioritize known individuals over unknown individuals.

It also prioritizes Jim over the good Doctor." Spock says this with such utter blandness that it takes Ben a few seconds to realize that this is actually an amazingly clever insult.

"Your translator seems perfectly able when you need to insult me," McCoy responds.

"I am never insulting," Spock says, and Ben realizes that his humor is sarcasm so dry it probably makes Antarctica seem jungle-like in comparison. "I merely speak plain fact in response to emotional outbursts."

"They are lovers," Chekov, the tiny Russian boy, says. He has just woken up from where he has been curled against Scotty.

McCoy sputters, while, to Ben's amusement and surprise, Spock blushes green.

"You have green blood?" Hikaru asks, thankfully diverting the topic from who in this van is having sex with whom. That's going to be interesting to negotiate, in any case, no matter what the answer is.

"Yes," Spock says. "I am, however, not a lizard person."

"Are you sure?" McCoy asks.

Spock sighs. It is the smallest, most sarcastic sigh Ben has ever heard.

This is road trip, it seems, is going to be far from boring.

"What kind of sitcom did we just walk into?" Ben asks Hikaru.

"A Logo one, I think," Hikaru says.

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